Una Marson
Encyclopedia
Una Maud Victoria Marson (5 May 1905 - 1965) was a Jamaican feminist, activist and writer, producing poems, plays and programmes for the BBC
. Marson traveled to London
in 1932 and worked for the BBC during World War II
.
At the age of 10, she was enrolled in Hampton High, a girl's boarding school in Jamaica of which her father was on the board of trustees. However, that same year, Reverend Isaac died, leaving the family with financial problems, so the family moved to Kingston, Jamaica. Una finished school at Hampton High, but did not go on to a college education.
After she left from Hampton, she found work in Kingston as a volunteer social worker and used the secretarial skills, such as stenography, she had learned in school.
In 1926, she was appointed assistant editor of the Jamaican political journal, Jamaica Critic. Her years at Jamaica Critic taught her journalism skills as well as influencing her political and social opinions and inspired her to create her own publication. In fact, in 1928, she became Jamaica's first female editor and publisher of her own magazine, The Cosmopolitan. The Cosmopolitan featured articles on feminist topics, local social issues and workers' rights and was aimed at a young, middle class Jamaican audience. Marson's articles encouraged women to join the work force and to become politically active. The magazine also featured Jamaican poetry and literature from Marson's fellow members of the Jamaican Poetry League, started by Clare Macfarlane.
In 1930, Marson published her first collection of poems, entitled Tropic Reveries, that dealt with love and nature with elements of feminism. It won the Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica. Her poems about love are somewhat misunderstood by friends and critics, as there is no evidence of a romantic relationship in Marson's life, although love continued to be a common topic in her work. In 1931, due to financial difficulties, The Cosmopolitan ceased publication, which lead her to begin publishing more poetry and plays. In 1931, she published another collection of poetry, entitled Heights and Depths, which also dealt with love and social issues. Also in 1931, she wrote her first play, At What a Price. The play is about a Jamaican girl who moves from the country into the city of Kingston to work as a stenographer and falls in love with her white male boss. It opened in Jamaica and later London to critical acclaim. In 1932, she decided to go to London to find a broader audience for her work and to experience life outside of Jamaica.
Marson first moved to London in 1932. The racism and sexism she met there "transformed both her life and her poetry"; Marson's voice in her poetry became more focused on the identity of black women in England. In this period then, Marson not only continued to write about women's roles in society, but also put into the mix the issues faced by black people who lived in England.
In July 1933, Marson wrote a poem called "Nigger", which appeared in The League of Coloured People's journal, The Keys. "Nigger" is one of Marson's more forceful poems addressing racism in England. However, this poem only saw light seven years later when it was published in 1940.
Outside of her writing at that time, Marson was in the London branch of the International Alliance of Women, a global feminist organization. By 1935, she was involved with the International Alliance of Women based in Istanbul.
In promoting Jamaican literature, she published Moth and the Star in 1937. Many poems in that volume demonstrate how despite the media's portrayal that black women have inferior beauty when compared to the whites, black women should still be confident in their own physical beauty. This theme is seen in "Cinema Eyes", "Little Brown Girl", "Black is Fancy" and "Kinky Hair Blues". However, Marson herself was affected by the stereotype of superior white beauty; Marson herself, her biographer tells us, within months of her arrival in Britain "stopped straightening her hair and went natural".
Going along with her feminist principles, Marson worked with Louise Bennett to create another play called London Calling, which was about a woman who moved to London to further her education. However, the woman later became homesick and returned to Jamaica. This play shows how the main character is a "strong heroine" for being able to "force herself to return to London" in order to finish her education there. Also in the feminist vein, Marxon wrote Public Opinion, contributing to the feminist column.
Marson's third play, Pocomania, is about a woman named Stella who is looking for an exciting life. Critics suggest that this play is significant because it demonstrates how an "Afro-religious cult" affects middle-class women. Pocomania is also one of Marson's most important works because she was able to put the essence of the Jamaican culture into this play. Critics such as Ivy Baxter said that "Pocomania was a break in tradition because it talked about a cult from the country", and, as such, it represented a turning point in what was acceptable on the stage.
In 1937, Marson wrote a poem called "Quashie comes to London", which is the perspective of England in a Caribbean narrative. In Caribbean dialect, quashie means gullible or unsophisticated. Although initially impressed, Quashie becomes disgusted with England because there is not enough good food there. The poem shows how, although England has good things to offer, it is Jamaican culture that Quashie misses, and therefore Marson implies that England is supposed to be "the temporary venue for entertainment". The poem shows how it was possible for a writer to implement Caribbean dialect in a poem, and it is this usage of local dialect that situates Quashie's perspective of England as a Caribbean perspective.
Empire Service
to work on a programme in which World War II soldiers would have their messages read on the radio to their families.
By 1942, she became the programme's West Indies producer. During the same year, she turned the programme into Caribbean Voices, which was a forum in which Caribbean literary work was read over the radio. Over two hundred authors appeared on Caribbean Voices, including V. S. Naipaul
, Samuel Selvon
, George Lamming
and Derek Walcott
. Through this show, Marson met people such as Clare McFarlane, Vic Reid, Andrew Salkey
, Langston Hughes
, James Weldon Johnson
, Jomo Kenyatta
, Haile Selassie, Marcus Garvey
, Amy Garvey
, Nancy Cunard
, Sylvia Pankhurst
, Winifred Holtby
, Paul Robeson
, John Masefield
, Louis MacNeice
, T. S. Eliot
, Tambimuttu and George Orwell
. The latter helped Marson edit the show before she turned it into Caribbean Voices. However, "despite these experiences and personal connections, there is a strong sense, in Marson's poetry and in Jarrett-Macauley's biography [Life of Una Marson], that Marson remained something of an isolated and marginal figure".
Although a marginal figure, her radio show, Caribbean Voices, was described by Kamau Brathwaite as "the single most important literary catalyst for Caribbean creative writing in English". Since the radio medium meant that the poems could only be read verbally, Caribbean Voices helped to influence later Caribbean poetry to have a more spoken form; as Laurence Breiner notes, through the medium of radio "much West Indian poetry was heard rather than seen".
Sources differ in outlining Marson's personal life during this time period. Author Erika J. Waters states that Marson was a secretary for the Pioneer Press, a publishing company in Jamaica for Jamaican authors. This source believes that she then moved to Washington DC in the 1950s where she met and married a dentist named Peter Staples. The two allegedly divorced, allowing Marson to travel to England, Israel, then back to Jamaica where she died in 1965. Another source, written by Lee M. Jenkins, offers a very different tale for Marson's personal life. This source says that Marson was sent to a mental hospital following a breakdown during the years 1946-1949. After being released, Marson founded the Pioneer Press. This source claims that Marson then went to the US in the 1950s where she had another breakdown and was admitted to St. Elizabeth's Asylum. Following this, Marson returned to Jamaica where she rallied against Rastafarian discrimination. She then went to Israel for a women's conference, an experience which she discussed in her last radio broadcast for Woman's Hour
on BBC.
The conflicting details regarding Marson's personal life show that there is very little information available about her. For example, Water's article quotes Marson's criticisms of Porgy and Bess, yet provides no citation for this work. In combination with this is the limited record of her writings during this time period. Many of her works were left unpublished or only circulated in Jamaica. Most of these writings are only available in the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston. Given these constraints, it is difficult to understand the whole of Una Marson's accomplishments during the final period of her life.
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Marson traveled to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1932 and worked for the BBC during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Early years 1905-1932
Una Marson was born on February 6, 1905, in Santa Cruz, Jamaica, in the parish of St. Elizabeth. She was the youngest of six children of Reverend Soloman Isaac, a Baptist parson, and Ada Marson. Una had a middle class upbringing and was very close to her father, who influenced some of her father-like characters in her later works. As a child before going to school she was an avid reader of available literature, which at the time was mostly English classical literature.At the age of 10, she was enrolled in Hampton High, a girl's boarding school in Jamaica of which her father was on the board of trustees. However, that same year, Reverend Isaac died, leaving the family with financial problems, so the family moved to Kingston, Jamaica. Una finished school at Hampton High, but did not go on to a college education.
After she left from Hampton, she found work in Kingston as a volunteer social worker and used the secretarial skills, such as stenography, she had learned in school.
In 1926, she was appointed assistant editor of the Jamaican political journal, Jamaica Critic. Her years at Jamaica Critic taught her journalism skills as well as influencing her political and social opinions and inspired her to create her own publication. In fact, in 1928, she became Jamaica's first female editor and publisher of her own magazine, The Cosmopolitan. The Cosmopolitan featured articles on feminist topics, local social issues and workers' rights and was aimed at a young, middle class Jamaican audience. Marson's articles encouraged women to join the work force and to become politically active. The magazine also featured Jamaican poetry and literature from Marson's fellow members of the Jamaican Poetry League, started by Clare Macfarlane.
In 1930, Marson published her first collection of poems, entitled Tropic Reveries, that dealt with love and nature with elements of feminism. It won the Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica. Her poems about love are somewhat misunderstood by friends and critics, as there is no evidence of a romantic relationship in Marson's life, although love continued to be a common topic in her work. In 1931, due to financial difficulties, The Cosmopolitan ceased publication, which lead her to begin publishing more poetry and plays. In 1931, she published another collection of poetry, entitled Heights and Depths, which also dealt with love and social issues. Also in 1931, she wrote her first play, At What a Price. The play is about a Jamaican girl who moves from the country into the city of Kingston to work as a stenographer and falls in love with her white male boss. It opened in Jamaica and later London to critical acclaim. In 1932, she decided to go to London to find a broader audience for her work and to experience life outside of Jamaica.
London years (1932-1936)
From 1932 to 1945, Marson moved back and forth between London and Jamaica. She continued to contribute to politics, but now instead of focusing on writing for magazines, she wrote for newspapers and her own literary works in order to get her political ideas across. In these years, Marson kept writing to advocate feminism, but one of her new emphases was on the race issue in England.Marson first moved to London in 1932. The racism and sexism she met there "transformed both her life and her poetry"; Marson's voice in her poetry became more focused on the identity of black women in England. In this period then, Marson not only continued to write about women's roles in society, but also put into the mix the issues faced by black people who lived in England.
In July 1933, Marson wrote a poem called "Nigger", which appeared in The League of Coloured People's journal, The Keys. "Nigger" is one of Marson's more forceful poems addressing racism in England. However, this poem only saw light seven years later when it was published in 1940.
Outside of her writing at that time, Marson was in the London branch of the International Alliance of Women, a global feminist organization. By 1935, she was involved with the International Alliance of Women based in Istanbul.
Jamaica (1936-1938)
Marson returned to Jamaica in 1936, where one of her goals was to promote national literature. One step she took in achieving this goal was to help create the Kingston Readers and Writers Club, as well as the Kingston Drama Club. She also founded the Jamaica Save the Children Fund, an organization that raised funds to give the poorer children money to get a basic education.In promoting Jamaican literature, she published Moth and the Star in 1937. Many poems in that volume demonstrate how despite the media's portrayal that black women have inferior beauty when compared to the whites, black women should still be confident in their own physical beauty. This theme is seen in "Cinema Eyes", "Little Brown Girl", "Black is Fancy" and "Kinky Hair Blues". However, Marson herself was affected by the stereotype of superior white beauty; Marson herself, her biographer tells us, within months of her arrival in Britain "stopped straightening her hair and went natural".
Going along with her feminist principles, Marson worked with Louise Bennett to create another play called London Calling, which was about a woman who moved to London to further her education. However, the woman later became homesick and returned to Jamaica. This play shows how the main character is a "strong heroine" for being able to "force herself to return to London" in order to finish her education there. Also in the feminist vein, Marxon wrote Public Opinion, contributing to the feminist column.
Marson's third play, Pocomania, is about a woman named Stella who is looking for an exciting life. Critics suggest that this play is significant because it demonstrates how an "Afro-religious cult" affects middle-class women. Pocomania is also one of Marson's most important works because she was able to put the essence of the Jamaican culture into this play. Critics such as Ivy Baxter said that "Pocomania was a break in tradition because it talked about a cult from the country", and, as such, it represented a turning point in what was acceptable on the stage.
In 1937, Marson wrote a poem called "Quashie comes to London", which is the perspective of England in a Caribbean narrative. In Caribbean dialect, quashie means gullible or unsophisticated. Although initially impressed, Quashie becomes disgusted with England because there is not enough good food there. The poem shows how, although England has good things to offer, it is Jamaican culture that Quashie misses, and therefore Marson implies that England is supposed to be "the temporary venue for entertainment". The poem shows how it was possible for a writer to implement Caribbean dialect in a poem, and it is this usage of local dialect that situates Quashie's perspective of England as a Caribbean perspective.
London years (1938-1945)
Marson returned to London in 1938 to continue to work on the Jamaican Save the Children project that she started in Jamaica, and also to be on the staff of the Jamaican Standard. In 1941, she was hired by the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Empire Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
to work on a programme in which World War II soldiers would have their messages read on the radio to their families.
By 1942, she became the programme's West Indies producer. During the same year, she turned the programme into Caribbean Voices, which was a forum in which Caribbean literary work was read over the radio. Over two hundred authors appeared on Caribbean Voices, including V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
, Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon was a Trinidad-born writer. Selvon was educated at Naparima College, San Fernando before moving to London, England in the 1950s, and later to Alberta, Canada. He is known for novels such as The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending...
, George Lamming
George Lamming
George Lamming , is a novelist and poet. He was born in Barbados and teaches at Brown University.- Early life and education :George Lamming was born on June 8, 1927 in Carrington Village, Barbados, of mixed African and English parentage. After his mother married his stepfather, Lamming split his...
and Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
. Through this show, Marson met people such as Clare McFarlane, Vic Reid, Andrew Salkey
Andrew Salkey
Andrew Salkey was a novelist, poet, freelance writer and journalist of Jamaican and Haitian origin. Salkey was born in Panama but was raised in Jamaica...
, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
, James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and...
, Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyattapron.] served as the first Prime Minister and President of Kenya. He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation....
, Haile Selassie, Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH was a Jamaican publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League...
, Amy Garvey
Amy Garvey
Amy Garvey may refer to:*Amy Garvey *Amy Ashwood Garvey, Pan-Africanist activist and first wife of Marcus Garvey*Amy Jacques Garvey, Pan-Africanist writer and second wife of Marcus Garvey...
, Nancy Cunard
Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class but strongly rejected her family's values, devoting much of her life to fighting racism and fascism...
, Sylvia Pankhurst
Sylvia Pankhurst
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was an English campaigner for the suffragist movement in the United Kingdom. She was for a time a prominent left communist who then devoted herself to the cause of anti-fascism.-Early life:...
, Winifred Holtby
Winifred Holtby
Winifred Holtby was an English novelist and journalist, best known for her novel South Riding.-Life and writings:...
, Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, John Masefield
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...
, Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Frederick Louis MacNeice CBE was an Irish poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" which included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis; nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his Talking Bronco...
, T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, Tambimuttu and George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
. The latter helped Marson edit the show before she turned it into Caribbean Voices. However, "despite these experiences and personal connections, there is a strong sense, in Marson's poetry and in Jarrett-Macauley's biography [Life of Una Marson], that Marson remained something of an isolated and marginal figure".
Although a marginal figure, her radio show, Caribbean Voices, was described by Kamau Brathwaite as "the single most important literary catalyst for Caribbean creative writing in English". Since the radio medium meant that the poems could only be read verbally, Caribbean Voices helped to influence later Caribbean poetry to have a more spoken form; as Laurence Breiner notes, through the medium of radio "much West Indian poetry was heard rather than seen".
Life after World War II (1945-1965)
While details of Una Marson's life are limited, those pertaining to her personal and professional life post-1945 are even harder to come by. In 1945, Marson published a poetry collection entitled Towards the Stars. This collection marked a shift in the focus of her poetry: while she once wrote about female sadness over lost love, poems from Towards the Stars were much more focused on the independent woman. Also at this time, Marson wrote at least one article entitled "We Want Books-But Do We Encourage Our Writers?" in an effort to spur Caribbean nationalism through literature. Her efforts outside of her writing seem to work in collaboration with these sentiments, though conflicting stories offer little concrete fevidence about what she exactly did.Sources differ in outlining Marson's personal life during this time period. Author Erika J. Waters states that Marson was a secretary for the Pioneer Press, a publishing company in Jamaica for Jamaican authors. This source believes that she then moved to Washington DC in the 1950s where she met and married a dentist named Peter Staples. The two allegedly divorced, allowing Marson to travel to England, Israel, then back to Jamaica where she died in 1965. Another source, written by Lee M. Jenkins, offers a very different tale for Marson's personal life. This source says that Marson was sent to a mental hospital following a breakdown during the years 1946-1949. After being released, Marson founded the Pioneer Press. This source claims that Marson then went to the US in the 1950s where she had another breakdown and was admitted to St. Elizabeth's Asylum. Following this, Marson returned to Jamaica where she rallied against Rastafarian discrimination. She then went to Israel for a women's conference, an experience which she discussed in her last radio broadcast for Woman's Hour
Woman's Hour
Woman's Hour is a radio magazine programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom.-History:Created by Norman Collins and originally presented by Alan Ivimey the programme was first broadcast on 7 October 1946 on the BBC's Light Programme . It was transferred to its current home in 1973...
on BBC.
The conflicting details regarding Marson's personal life show that there is very little information available about her. For example, Water's article quotes Marson's criticisms of Porgy and Bess, yet provides no citation for this work. In combination with this is the limited record of her writings during this time period. Many of her works were left unpublished or only circulated in Jamaica. Most of these writings are only available in the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston. Given these constraints, it is difficult to understand the whole of Una Marson's accomplishments during the final period of her life.
Criticisms of Marson's works
Critics have both praised and dismissed Marson's poetry. She has been criticized for mimicking European style, such as Romantic and Georgian poetics. For example, Marson's poem "mimics the style of Kipling's poem". Author Denise deCaires Narain suggests that Marson was overlooked because poetry concerning the condition and status of females was not important to audiences at the time the works were produced. Other critics, by contrast, praised Marson for her modern style. Some, like Narain, even suggest that her mimicking challenged conventional poetry of the time in an effort to criticize European poets. Regardless, Marson was active in the West Indian writing community during that period. Her involvement with Caribbean Voices was important to publicising Caribbean literature internationally, as well as spurring nationalism within the Caribbean Islands which she represented.Works
- Tropic Reveries (1930, book)
- Heights and Depths (1932, book)
- At What a Price (1933, play)
- Moth and the Star (1937, book)
- London Calling (1938, play)
- Pocomania (1938, play)
- Towards the Stars: Poems (1945, book)
- Also published many articles in various periodicals
External links
- Oxford Biography of Una Marson
- The Life of Una Marson
- Biography of Una Marson and limited preview of the book in Google Books
- Una Marson's book of poetry, Heights and Depths within the Digital Library of the Caribbean
- Una Marson's book of poetry, The Moth and the Star within the Digital Library of the Caribbean
- Una Marson's book of poetry, Tropic Reveries within the Digital Library of the Caribbean